Steve Downton, Downton Service Management Consultants Ltd, Noventum Group
Debates about break-fix; about professional services; about different ways of supporting hardware and software, and now e-support, have been exercising the services industry for years. Strategies have included training of engineers; re-skilling and even de-skilling; hardware companies trying to merge with consultancies; and software suppliers providing their own integrators. All these can prove effective in the effort to increase margins. The danger, however, with all this, is that there may be an emphasis on style over content - no matter what label is applied or modus operandi employed, there will always be a customer at the end of the service and each customer will have their own unique understanding of what service means for them.
The initial focus must be to understand the customer and then comes the challenge of making money from customer service. Differentiation between hardware and software has, in the high tech arena, been replaced to a large extent by the challenge posed by merging technologies; of IT, Telecom, and Copier, for example. Many saw the original differentiation between hardware and software as a fairly arbitrary definition of the interaction of one device with others, of either similar or different function. Many see merging technologies as a recognition that symptom and fault within the total configuration quite often no longer co-exist, and could be, literally, countries apart.
What does this shift of emphasis mean for the service organisation, now that suppliers have driven their customers into demanding a price per visit; and to treating calls closed through the contact centre as separate from calls closed via a visit; and where some Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) will not award a warranty payment without a part issue receipt, and so on……?
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